Maillart’s practices for structural design : (ETH-Bibliothek’s virtual exhibition)

Zastavni, Denis [UCL]

On the occasion of the future release of the ETH-Bibliothek’s virtual exhibition some time in 2012, this paper synthesises Maillart’s approaches and reasoning on the structural issue applied to concrete structures from material that has now been collected. The idea behind the exhibition is to bring researchers and ETH-Bibliothek’s resources together in order to present the original documents to an interested wider public in a modern way and within a scientific context. In the specific case of Maillart’s works, the focus of the virtual exhibition is primarily on a technical analysis of Maillart’s structures, methods and innovations. It is in this respect perhaps that the virtual exhibition differs from others, with the difficulty of conveying it to a non-specialist audience. This contribution resumes Maillart’s methods following the main chapter of the exhibition including graphic statics, simplified calculation or analysis, full-scale testing, implicitly resorting to plastic theorems and more.